First 20 (Spoilerish Review)

So, this is going to get kind of lengthy, so i'll put the tl;dr right up here for the lazy folk.

tl;dr : It's pretty *beep* good.

The idea here is, I'll talk about the first 20 minutes, and at that point you should be watching the rest. ;)

So, the movie amazingly enough starts at the *beep* beginning. No in-media-res *beep* which is a nice departure from a lot of films I've been watching lately.

Our primary antagonist, (Linden Ashby) is sipping on a drink, watching an interview program in which he was interviewed at some point prior, and through a nice cut, we see that our First lead, (Manu Bennett) is also watching the same program, whilst his wife is attempting to get him out the door, in what seems to be somewhat of a hurry. This builds the plot up, subtly. Our first lead is focused heavily on the interview, and expresses that he needs to hear the answer to a question posed during the interview. The interview proceeds as the wife continues to pack, and we hear the beginning of an Ironic Echo. "At the end of the day, it's your quarter."

The wife heads for the door, to go out and start the car, when the plot comes in, full force, and kicks her ass, kicks his ass, kicks my ass, and kick's the directors ass for even considering keeping it chained up for a second later. This kind of stuff is what makes action movies great.

We get a nice title sequence, that opens with "Nothing is what it seems." Truer words have never been spoken! as the film progresses we find that the straight-action movie we're expecting is filled to the brim with social commentary, sprinkled with a nice, crisp flavor of a light satire dressing, rooted in a casserole of action. The title sequence itself is hammered through with a nice 90s esque synthwavey industrial electronica, that can only be brought to you by Julien-K.

The First Act opens up, with a Hungarian looking bastard, holding a package. And if life has taught me anything, it's to be weary of any Hungarian looking bastards with a package. As an aside, I want to take a moment to talk about this delivery boy character, and how well the actor has portrayed him. With every second of this scene, you can see the look of slight boredom in his eyes. Every bit of his body language screams "I want to get home, and watch some movies or something."

The delivery boy's actor is able to demonstrate a significant range, he shows us, rather then tells us that he's on his regular route, through a slight dickish, jovial nature with his customer, even though the man would clearly rather be home, with his dog and his cat. Thus, this actor is either the finest actor on the planet, or has spent a few years as an actual delivery boy, bringing years of experience into this role.

As we progress into the first act, our second lead (Larenz Tate) opens his package from our talented delivery boy actor, and as he fumbles with it's contents, we see various articles on his wall, showing us some of our first lead's backstory with subtlety, not needing to beat us over the head with his accomplishments. He reveals a disc, and thus begins the second half of the plot, filling in the pieces.

We are then introduced to our Oracle-esque character, who is a voice on the phone. (A clever way to allow our secondary lead to dialogue and ex-posit, without looking like a schizophrenic. ) And a sexy one, at that. Voice acting is also very tough, but our supporting actress does a good job of showing a relationship with the secondary lead, without the use of body language. No doubt her and our skilled delivery boy actor could create a race of super-actors.

We cut back to our first lead, and show the world through his eyes, as well as cutting back to our second lead, showing the world through the game, and thus we've successfully tied both ends of the plot together, seamlessly. This time is also used to do a bit of universe building, showing the "rules" of the game, but also adding the immediacy of the plot, and giving us the stake, allowing us to begin our emotional investment in our leads.

As a side note, at this point, I want to take a moment to explain just how much I love Manu Bennett's Car. I am personally more of a Camero guy, myself, but something about this car just screams sexy, to the point where had it been my film, Manu Bennett's Car would have received top billing, cementing itself in history and the record books, as the first time a vehicle has received billing in a film, and as the first time an actor's car has received higher billing then the actor in the film who actually owns it.

Fortunately, for the potential audience, and the sake of Manu Bennett's career, this is not my film, thus a proper, more traditional billing takes place. But still, nice *beep* car, brother.

At this point, the audience knows a bit more then our secondary lead, which leads to some humor as he experiments with his "game", not realizing that the "game" is real. This also helps further demonstrate his relationship with tech support, without having to *tell* us about it. Something other directors should note as a useful technique. (*cough* george lucas * uncough*)

And thus, we conclude the first 20 minutes of the movie. The plot, already well established. We've had a slight amount of action, just enough to tease us into the first real action scene. We've had relationships between character shown to us, instead of told, we've had an actor excel at a small part when most people would have phoned it in,
we've had the stakes, set allowing us to become emotionally invested, and we have a sweet *beep* car.

This may be a "traditional"-esque forumla, but in Beta Test (2016), it is executed flawlessly from the beginning. So, how is the first 20 minutes? As said in the tl;dr,

It's pretty *beep* good.